


A Möbius Strip, Burning

by MissBliss12



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU - Smuggler Rey and Prince Ben, Adopted brothers Poe and Ben Organa, And Finn had been in Darth Vaders, And Poe had been in Luke's, And Rey had been in Han's, And Rose had been in Lando's, Completely prose this time except for a few illustrations!, Dark Side Force Sensitive Finn, Everything is familiar yet strange, F/M, Gen, History set on fire - a mobius strip burning, If Ben Solo had been in Leia Organa's position in New Hope, If Ben had been shielded by his mother and uncle, If Finn had been Force sensitive and noticed by Snoke, If Rey had left Jakku in the Millenium Falcon, Instant fascination between Ben and Rey, No character bashing here - everyone is complex and broken, Sexual Tension, Weird TFA and New Hope mash-up (even more so than TFA already is!), lots of family relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 15:09:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19337044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBliss12/pseuds/MissBliss12
Summary: The irony of his situation hadn’t escaped Ben. He leaned back against the metallic walls of his cell with as much dignity as he could muster and said, “aren’t you a little short to be a stormtrooper?”To his surprise, the stormtrooper put its hands on its hips in an exasperated gesture.“Aren’t you a little snarky to be a prince?” the stormtrooper replied.Suddenly, the situation was distinctly unfunny.“Poe?” Ben asked, incredulous.Sure enough, when the stormtrooper lifted its helmet, Poe Dameron's cocky grin greeted his horrified, gaping brother.“Big brother’s here to rescue you,” Poe said. “Come one, Ben.”**When Prince Ben Organa is captured by the First Order's Tuwan Ren (formerly stormtrooper FN-2187), his adopted brother Poe and Uncle Luke hire a smuggler to stage a rescue. Smuggler Rey isn't prepared for her encounter with the Prince to reawaken her Force powers, powers she promised Han Solo she'd buried. As fate finds new ways to push and pull them apart, Rey and Ben struggle to hold on to their undeniable connection while balancing their duties to the galaxy.





	A Möbius Strip, Burning

**I. Ben**

 

The irony of his situation hadn’t escaped Ben.

Maybe it wasn’t irony at all - maybe it was the cyclical nature of the universe Uncle Luke always talked about.

“Nothing old and nothing new,” Uncle Luke used to whisper, as if he were telling his little nephew a valuable secret. Back then, Ben liked to think they were co-conspirators, comrades in unravelling the workings of the cosmos.

Uncle Luke always indulged Ben’s endless questions, though the answers he gave were mystifying at best and pure nonsense at worst. Entering into conversation with him was like discovering a new planet, a rich and strange panorama of mind-boggling colors, forms, and gravity.

“There are no beginnings and no endings,” Uncle Luke chanted, his favorite mantra. “Everything repeats itself, forever familiar and strange. Don’t you think that’s beautiful, Ben?”

Ben failed to find anything beautiful about his current situation. The prison cell he’d been thrown in was tiny and cold. His white ambassadorial robes were stained with grime and sweat. His knuckles were bruised and bloody.

No, there was nothing beautiful about his predicament. It was laughable, like a painfully repetitive joke that forced its listener to laugh lest he lose his mind. Except this time, the joke had changed. It wasn’t his mother, Princess Leia Organa, captured by Darth Vader. It was her son, Prince Ben Organa, at Supreme Leader Snoke’s mercy.

Ben almost chuckled when a stormtrooper entered his cell, completing the miserable mise en scene. _Well, if this was how the universe wanted to play it…_

He leaned back against the metallic walls of his cell with as much dignity as he could muster and said, “aren’t you a little short to be a stormtrooper?”

To his surprise, the stormtrooper put its hands on its hips in an exasperated gesture.

“Aren’t you a little snarky to be a prince?” the stormtrooper replied.

Suddenly, the situation was distinctly unfunny.

“Poe?” Ben asked, incredulous.

Sure enough, when the stormtrooper lifted its helmet, Poe Dameron's cocky grin greeted his horrified, gaping brother.

“Big brother’s here to rescue you,” Poe said. “Come one, Ben.”

Ben launched himself at Poe, shoving him roughly on both shoulders.

“Ow! What gives?”

“What are you doing here, you reckless nerfherder?” Ben exclaimed. “Didn’t you get my message? You and Uncle Luke are supposed to be taking the Starkiller plans back to our base. You’re supposed to be figuring out a way to destroy the superweapon!”

“And what about you, huh, Ben?” Poe countered. “Was I just supposed to leave you here, in Tuwan Ren’s dastardly clutches?”

Tuwan Ren.

Ben shivered, thinking back to the moment Tuwan’s ship had eclipsed Ben’s own vessel, like the moon overtaking the sun. The battle between their two forces - the legion of stormtroopers to a handful or rebel fighters - had been short and brutal and deadly. Even with all that death and pain surrounding him, Ben hadn’t called on the Force once. He kept telling himself it was the right choice but, surrounded by desperate cries and wounded bodies, the words felt hollow and thin.

Probably sensing his doubt, Tuwan Ren called to him.

“Not going to help, Prince Ben Organa?” he asked, pointing his red lightsaber directly at Ben. It wasn’t a challenge so much as an accusation, a condemnation. “Are you that afraid of the dark?”

During the battle, the ships generator had been shot, so the only light illuminating the men came from the spark of severed wires, burning equipment, and Tuwan’s lightsaber. He looked like Darth Vader in the dark. It was as if Ben’s grandfather were taunting him from the shadows.

But then the back-up generator kicked in and Ben saw Tuwan Ren’s mask transform in the light. It was a black version of the stormtrooper mask, with three metallic streaks running down the left eye. It was as if the helmet had been smeared by the bloody fingerprints of a dying robot.

“The Dark calls to you,” Tuwan stated. His voice crackled like static, like a voice belonging to a speaker somewhere far, far away. “You know it should be you here, in my place.”

Angry fear coursed through Ben’s veins, too terrible and tempting to deny. Without thinking, he called on the Force for the first time in years. His hand shot out in the direction of a broken engine and, quick as a lightning strike, he sent it flying into Tuwan’s face.

Tuwan fell back hard, his mask cracked down the left side. Beneath it’s broken surface, a brown eye peered out. His skin was a rich earthy color. His hair was short and dark.

It was an entirely too human face for a monster, and this inspired more fear than any fangs or horns or skulls could have inside of Ben.

Compounding that horror was the all-too familiar sound of Snoke’s voice whispering in his ear. He hadn’t heard it since he was a boy, but he had never forgotten its timbre. It sounded like a star falling; it sounded like a fire burning out; it sounded like the silence in the wake of a departed ship; it sounded like loneliness at the edge of the world.

 _Prince Ben Organa,_ it crooned. _That should have been you. My apprentice._

And Ben cut off the Force once again.

This memory alone transformed Ben’s reaction to Poe’s impulsive rescue from ire into gratitude. Ben had somehow stumbled into a maze of his oldest and darkest nightmares but Poe - foolhardy and courageous Poe - had come running in after him. He owed him his life. No, he owed him more than that.

“Thank you, Poe,” he said.

Poe clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Come on. Rey can’t hold ‘em off forever.”

They stumbled out of the dark prison cell and into the light together, Ben asking:

“Who’s Rey?”

 

**II. Rey**

 

Rey was reflecting on the circular path her own life had taken as she felled stormtrooper after stormtrooper with her staff. Before she’d boarded the Supremacy as guard to dashing Dameron’s prince rescue, her life had been a series of endless fights. Fights with scavengers, fights with thieves, fights with slave traders, fights with greedy junk traders. Fights with every wretched soul living on the desert graveyard called Jakku.

Sick of the monotony, of fights that had become so routine that they ceased to quicken her heartbeat, she had stolen a garbage freighter and escaped to the stars. She had promised herself a life of something more than endless teeth, fists, and blood, beginning her career as a smuggler and captain of what she would soon realized was the Millenium Falcon.

She had put that life of fighting behind her.

_So why the kriff was she here?_

“I didn’t sign up for this!” she roared, propelling a stormtrooper into the ceiling with a blow from her staff. She was burning with anger. Luckily she had plenty of targets. Granted, most of them lay on the floor in broken heaps, and several of them were fleeing down the hallways in sheer terror.

_Kriff, what was discipline like in the First Order?_

Rey was contemplating the sorry state of the First Order’s education system when dashing Dameron reappeared, followed by a tall figure in white robes who must have been Prince Ben Organa.

Dameron took a look at the bodies piled around Rey and said, “you took care of them, didn’t you?”

He said something else in a tone of admiration and fear, but she was no longer paying attention. Her eyes were locked with Prince Ben’s. Something in her… flipped over.

She felt like she’d eaten rotten meat or fallen from a wrecked starcruiser and into the sand. The gravity in the hallway seemed to shift. It was a sensation both strange and familiar, terrifying and calming, ecstatic and devastating.

It felt a lot like the Force.

Rey hadn’t felt the Force in years, not since Han Solo had looked at her with a ghost in his eyes and said, “Kid, unless you shut it out, that thing is gonna kill you.”

“It hasn’t killed me yet,” Rey had answered. “Saved my life a few times, actually.”

“It kills you slowly,” Han insisted. “Like some sort of silent disease. Every little pain it’s causing you now is gonna turn into a big, irreparable wound in time. I’m serious, kid.”

Rey knew he was. He so rarely showed any serious fear or concern, that something about this honest exchange was frightening.

“Promise me,” Han said. “Promise me you’ll shut it out.”

It was presumptuous of him to demand that. She wasn’t his daughter or even his friend. She’d commandeered his ship and he, unwilling to accept her command but unable to get her to leave, had treated her like an unwanted colleague. Over time, familiarity has worn down the jagged edges their relationship, like sand smooths coarse stone, but the affection he showed her was safe and distant. Rey recognised it as the tenderness you gave something you knew was going to disappear.

So this show of worry, of vulnerability, was startling. At once, she both craved and was repulsed by his familial attention.

Yet, a phantom light glimmered in his eyes.

“Alright, I promise,” Rey said, crossing her arms. “Happy?”

“I ain’t never gonna be happy,” Han replied. He rose from his seat and put his hand on her shoulder. That touch lasted only an instant - before she could register the warmth of his palm and fingers, Han had wandered off into the dark recesses of the Falcon.

She knew where he was going. There was a dark bedroom in the heart of the Falcon that Han liked to spend hours pacing around in, tracing invisible endless circles. The action reminded her of picking at a tender wound over and over, pulling the crusty blood off before new skin had formed, leaving a gaping space from which fresh blood could flow. That bedroom was a wound that would never heal, a stream of blood that would never stop.

Sometimes, he stopped in the middle of his pacing and clutched at his elbows, shoulders trembling.

He didn’t cry. Men like Han didn’t know how to cry.

They just hid the sad lost boys they never fully grew out of deep inside their bones. Wrapped in desperate casualness, fragile toughness, and lonely independence, these boys were rarely seen, rarely touched, and rarely broken.

This was what endeared Han to Rey. Not him being a famous smuggler or an ace pilot or a war hero.

Rey had let Han into her heart because, against his better judgment, he held all his terrible treasured scars close to his.

So, despite all the dangerous adventures and mad schemes she would undertake following that strangely raw conversation in the Millenium Falcon, she would never break her promise to him. She would be dangled over pits, shot with arrows, and tied to burning idols, but she would never, in all those years, reconnect with the Force.

Yet in this moment, gazing into the Prince’s dark eyes - the Prince’s dark eyes gazing back into hers - she was almost overcome by the unbearable urge to reach out through the Force just to feel the edges of his being.

 _Who are you?_ the innermost part of her whispered. _What have you done to me?_

If she’d been in her right mind, she’d be unspeakably embarrassed by this sudden and violent need. But Rey and the Prince had somehow stumbled into a higher plane of existence where sanity and time no longer mattered. Somewhere the past, present, and future were trivial. Rey had been deconstructed and reassembled with electricity flowing through her veins.

She was panting harshly, as if she had been underwater for a long time and had only now resurfaced to breathe. He was breathing in the same way.

Dameron prodded the Prince’s shoulder and said, “This is Rey. The smuggler Luke and I hired to rescue you.”

Then Dameron laughed, loud and helpless.

The moment between Rey and the Prince broke, like a castle of Sabbac cards crumbling at the slightest breeze.

Heat flooded through her and it was only through sheer force of will that her face remained neutral. What was she thinking? Had she contracted some kind of space madness from Dameron’s weird sand hermit uncle? She was confused and ashamed by the intensity of her sudden longing, by the buzz that lingered in her limbs.

Dameron just kept on laughing, as if he had gone mad too. But then Prince Ben rounded on him with a murderous glare, and Rey realized this was a private joke between them.

“A smuggler,” the Prince said. His voice was rough and deep, like a rocky abyss. “Next you’ll tell me she pilots the Millenium Falcon.”

“About that…”

But before Poe could finish, a new wave of white masks were upon them. Rey picked up a fallen blaster and shot at the stormtroopers, her anxiety climbing as she observed a soldier rise for every one she felled.

“There’s too any of them!” she exclaimed.

Dameron and the Prince were beyond listening. They kept firing into the flood of stormtroopers, Dameron buoyed by cocksure recklessness and the Prince driven by burning rage.

Rey was going to have to save their skins. Scanning their surroundings quickly, she noticed a grate right behind the Prince. She didn’t know where it led, but it was somewhere other than here. She pried it open with her staff and waved at the men.

“Get in!” she directed.

They just stared at her, like she was a figure from a dream speaking a dreamland language.

She rounded on the Prince in frustration. Han had a special way for getting his noble wife’s attention, and Rey borrowed it now. “Now or never, your worshipfulness!”

The Prince rose to the bait wonderfully. “What did you just call me?” he asked.

Rey grabbed him by his white hood and threw him down the chute. He was heavy, but she was strong and had the element of surprise.

Without looking back, she cried out “Come on, Dameron!”, and climbed into the chute herself.

As she plummeted downwards, she prayed.

_Please, let this not lead to fire. Or grinding gears. Or lasers._

If her prayers failed her, like they had so many times before, the last image she’d have of this life would be Prince Ben Organa’s shocked face disappearing into the darkness.

 

**III. Tuwan**

 

Kneeling before a projection of his master, broken helmet in hand, Tuwan Ren also reflected on the cyclical shape of his torment.

“Tuwan Ren, master of the knights of Ren,” Snoke drawled. “Struck down by an unarmed ambassador. Perhaps you aren’t worthy of the title you bear. Should I give you back your old name, FN-2187?”

Snoke never missed a chance to belittle his apprentice by dredging up his lowly origins. It tickled his sadistic heart to see Tuwan’s resentment and anger drive him further and further into the dark.

He was being dyed black. He was being pounded into a human-shaped bruise.

And he was helpless to stop it.

Despite all his training and conquests, Tuwan never outgrew the helpless boy who’d been summoned to Snoke’s throne and told “You’re Force sensitive? Yes… it’s just a little drop of power in an endless ocean. But you’ll do. From now on, you shall be my apprentice, the creature that will lure Prince Ben Organa into the dark.”

Tuwan had always been a tool for crafting the Prince’s fall, never great or human enough to warrant a story of his own.

Even the name he’d been given was a shadow, a mockery of meaning.

“FN-2187.” Snoke drew out the syllables, as if he were cutting them apart with a blade. “Two one eight seven… two one… ah…”

Snoke’s laughter wasn’t a laugh. It was the flapping wings of a horde of crows; it was the disappearance of a parasite into the skin; it was the brush of a velvet evening gown against a pool of blood,

He said, “there is a word in the Lamay language that sounds like your name: ‘tuwan.’ It means ‘master.’ What are the chances that you, a mere stormtrooper, would possess something that echoes such a noble title?”

From then on, FN-2187 would no longer be FN-2187 but Tuwan Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren. Nothing and everything would change because of this, like a metamorphoses that had started and halted when the butterfly died in its cocoon.

Even the mask he wore was, in its essence, an aborted transformation. It was a black stormtrooper mask, a perversion of what Tuwan once was and what Prince Ben should have been.

Tuwan hated the Prince almost as much as Snoke. He was bound to this painful path, as Snoke told him time and again, only because the Prince had escaped it.

Misfortune always had to befall someone. It was a set of balanced scales. For one soul to be happy, another had to suffer in its place.

So Tuwan had taken vindictive pleasure in belittling the Prince, passing on the poison Snoke dripped into his ear. It was exactly what Snoke wanted, but, swaddled in that vicious and vengeful pleasure, Tuwan simply didn’t care.

“It should have been you, in my place,” he’d told the Prince. He watched with gleeful malice as the color drained from his enemy’s face. What Tuwan really meant was, “it should have been me, in yours.”

What he really meant was, “it should have been me, free.”

Like he wanted, the Prince succumbed to his anger. What he didn’t expect was that anger’s raw strength, a strength so awful and overwhelming that it put every one of Snoke’s covetous praises to shame.

In that moment between the anger and the blow, between Prince Ben surrendering to the Force and the engine colliding with Tuwan’s face, Tuwan had felt terrified.

The Prince’s blazing wrath was bigger than a single person could contain. It was tremendous: it was the Prince’s wrath; it was Tuwan’s wrath; it was the stormtroopers’ wrath; it was the rebels’ wrath; it was the living’s wrath; it was the dead’s wrath. Every destructive impulse from the beginning to the end of time had found a conduit in Prince Ben.

In that moment, beyond the mind-boggling terror, Tuwan wondered: _Is this the price of belonging to an important bloodline? Are you doomed to carry the darkness of all your ancestors and all their people and all their enemies on your shoulders?_

It was history set on fire -  a Möbius strip of blood and time and death folding in on itself inescapably.

It made Tuwan even angrier.

 _What, so you lay claim to all suffering?_ There was an endless scream clawing its way up his throat. _So only you deserve happiness?_

It was for that reason that Tuwan, broken helmet and all, had overpowered Prince Ben and enjoyed it.

He told Snoke a somewhat condensed version of this story.

“It was a lucky shot. I still beat him. We’re on the way to your ship now.”

“Yes.” Snoke smiled, satisfied like a child whose dominos had fallen into place. “Prince Ben has neglected his training for too long. And you, my apprentice, have not. Perhaps, once we have him aboard my vessel, you can show him the ways of the Force.”

The flickering projection flared and died, a ghost exorcised.

Making his way to Prince Ben’s holding cell, Tuwan felt a delayed sense of triumph tremble up his spine. The shakiness of feeling victorious was like the fragility of being afraid.

He was so close now. Snoke would lower his guard in front of Prince Ben. Having his prize within his grasp would make Snoke weak, and then Tuwan would…

Luke Skywalker stepped onto the bridge, his torn jedi robe billowing behind him. The event was so jarring and unexpected that the world seemed to tilt on its axis.

Tuwan recognized Luke Skywalker from his training. Yet, he only just recognized him. He only just recognized Skywalker in this old man, like he would only just recognize a starship in a ruin, or a planet in rubble, or a fire in ashes. He was the leftovers of a legend, what remained when a hero was already long gone.

Time had not been kind to him.

“Skywalker,” he said.

“Tuwan Ren,” Skywalker replied. Even his voice was an echo, the ringing of a bell from the past. “The boy I’ve heard so much about.”

“If you’re here to save your nephew, you're too late,” Tuwan said. “He’s as good as Snoke’s.”

Instead of kindling anger or despair, his words seemed to spark something else in Skywalker: pity. He pitied him, like one would pity a lost and injured child. He pitied him as if he were something weak.

“I’m sorry for what Snoke’s done to you.” Skywalker’s voice was soft and soothing. “No one should have to endure that.”

“But I did!” Tuwan cried. “While Force-Sensitives like me were suffering, you only cared about protecting your nephew. Even though you knew what was happening all these years, you turned a blind eye to the rest of the galaxy.”

Somewhere in that mass of pain, Tuwan wondered where he’d unearthed these words. He’d never thought of Skywalker beyond Snoke’s orders to capture or kill. He didn’t care about Luke Skywalker.

Despite all that, Tuwan cried, “you knew you were trading our peace for his! What kind of hero does that make you?”

Luke’s entire frame shook, as if he had been rocked by an earthquake. Tuwan wished his anger had the power to shake the planet, to shake the stars, to shake the galaxy. If his anger continued, like an arrow without a target, the soul he’d attached to its fletching would run out.

Everything was finite. Life. Peace. Happiness.

“Have you seen the goddess of justice from the planet Greciae?” Tuwan asked. Skywalker nodded. “She’s a blindfolded woman who holds a saber in one hand and a set of scales in the other. I think all the happiness in the world is balanced on a set of scales. There’s a finite amount of it in existence. When there’s more happiness on one side of the scales, that means there’s less on the other. Do you understand? If you want happiness, you’ve got to take it from someone else. If you’re unhappy, that means someone’s taken happiness from you.”

“I understand the concept,” Skywalker replied. “But everything you just told me… is wrong.”

Tuwan wanted to make him hurt. He wanted to push Skywalker into hurting him. But in the space between Skywalker giving his reply and Tuwan raising his lightsaber, the old man had transformed into that hero of old. He had become untouchable and imperturbable, a still lake in the garden of the gods. None of Tuwan’s blows reached Skywalker and none of his taunts goaded him into fighting back.

At the end of it all, Tuwan lay on the floor exhausted, Skywalker hovering over him like an ancient monument.

“It’s not too late,” Skywalker said. His breathing was steady, as if a fight hadn’t taken place. It wasn’t really a fight, Tuwan reflected. Just him raging into the void. “I can help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” Tuwan wheezed.

Skywalker looked like he begged to differ, but then a voice cried out:

“Uncle Luke!”

On a parallel bridge stood Prince Ben Organa, his white robes soaking wet and covered with dark seaweed. He looked like a siren that had emerged from the sea. Beside him was a fearsome girl holding a staff and a dashing young man wearing a stormtrooper uniform.

Skywalker’s attention was lost. In that moment Tuwan could have killed him if he’d had the strength.

A stormtrooper shot him instead.

“No!” Prince Ben’s cry reverberated off the metallic walls. Tuwan felt the gravity in the hallway shift as Prince Ben once again tapped into the Force and levitated his Uncle across the abyss. For some reason, Tuwan’s eyes were drawn to the staff-wielding girl who was staring at the Prince in utter astonishment. He barely registered the Prince holding his uncle in a bloody embrace - the two men he hated cradling each other like family.

Then the Prince rose, Skwalker’s crumpled form in his arms, and ran in the direction of the aircraft hanger.

“Help me go after them,” Tuwan told the stormtrooper. It shook its head and draped Tuwan’s arm around its shoulder.

“You’re in no condition to do that,” the stormtrooper replied.

Tuwan recognised the voice beneath the mask. However, out in the open, he was unable to call her name. Reluctantly, he let himself be led down the winding halls littered with fallen stormtroopers and into his quarters. Once inside, he uttered a helpless groan and fell onto his bed.

Paige Tico removed her stormtrooper helmet. Watching him with tender eyes, she said, in her best older sister voice:

“Let me see your wounds.”

 

**IV. Rose**

 

Rose Tico stood in front of a window overlooking Cloud City and contemplated her circular life. Her place in life, it seemed, was to always be surrounded by rich men and women who smelled like gold, dressed like nebulas, and laughed like black holes. Once, she and her sister had been their slaves. Once, those glittering creatures had circled her like asteroids threatening to crash into her atmosphere. Now they circled her like simpering stars, begging for the attention of a representative of Cloud City.

Lando often told her it was all a game.

“You don’t have to like them,” he'd say, leaning back at the card table, his cape flowing over the back of his chair. The light of the lanterns would reflect off its surface in an angelic, shimmering halo. “But you’ve got to have them in your corner. Those walking goldmines have the power you need to protect what’s most precious to you.”

He'd lay his cards on the table, smirking as he revealed he’d won the pot.

“I don’t want to rely on them,” Rose would reply, pouting.

Rose had never won a card game against Lando. Not once since the first day she landed on his doorstep, sent by General Leia to discuss plans to fight the First Order. He’d taken to her immediately because she hated him with a passion.

Lando craved challenges like plants craved sunlight.

Slowly, Rose had warmed up to him as he revealed the cynical tenderheart behind his flashy exterior. He wasn’t careless about his wealth, nor was he cruel about his status. He governed Cloud City like the dream ruler of a perfect world, where the wealthy cared for the poor and the strong protected the weak.

It was a world Rose and Paige had dreamed about, mining for valuable ores in dark and dusty mines. Lando’s world was a terrible and beautiful one because it reminded her of the world she had gained and the sister she had lost.

Lando, seeing her attachment, had asked her to stick around.

“I’m getting old, Rose.” Yet he still dressed slick and kept his black hair fine. “These people need a pretty young face to keep their attention.”

So she’d stuck around as his representative, helping to run Cloud City in his place. The impostor syndrome she’d felt when she first took his seat at council meetings ebbed away as she realised everyone there was a liar. Their lies were often less malicious than the masters she had known, but they told pretty, comforting lies all the same.

Lies like “maybe your sister’s still out there,” and “she’s probably hiding from Tuwan Ren,” and “she died doing something important.”

Rose knew the truth: that since the day Tuwan Ren had captured her sister’s team, no one had seen Paige Tico.

She’d always told her sister she wanted to save what she loved, not kill what she hated.

But staring down at the inhabitants of Cloud City, tiny specks that could have been ants from that distance on high, she was no longer sure it was true.

The comm flared to life.

“Hello? Is this Rose? Rose Tico?”

In the light of the setting sun, the projection of a fierce young woman flickered to life. She looked like she’d been in a fight. Her face was streaked in blood and her little pony tail was coming loose in stray brown strands of hair. Her brow furrowed in determination as she gripped the controls of her spacecraft.

“Yes?” Rose replied, approaching the projection. “This is Rose. Who are you?”

The fierce pilot seemed taken aback. Many people were startled to learn that Rose, representative of Cloud City, was someone so small and so young.

“Dameron told me to call,” the pilot continued. To her credit, she recovered herself quickly and spoke in a respectful, business-like tone. “We’ve got a man down. Could use the medical facilities on Cloud City.”

Then the pilot’s attention was lost. All of the sudden she was no longer a bloody warrior, but a pretty young woman with large and startled hazel eyes. She was staring at a tall figure in white who’d emerged from the shadowy recesses of the Falcon.

“Ben?” Rose said. The last she’d heard of him, he’d been captured by Tuwan, presumed dead and lost. She wanted to cry. She wanted to ask, _how are you here? How did you escape?_

_Did you hurt Tuwan Ren?_

“Rose,” he said. His eyes were dark and haunted, like he’d entered the underworld and returned a ghost. “Did Rey tell you what happened?”

So that was the name of the pilot. Rey.

If Rose had been less distracted by his miraculous return, she might have noticed the way Rey’s name transformed the shape of his mouth. How the pallor of death seemed to lift like a veil from his face, and his cheeks and eyes took on a living color. How, just a little bit, he moved closer to Rey and she moved closer to him, like two magnets drawn to each other.

But Rose was distracted by the image of his captor, her most hateful enemy, and she noticed nothing else.

“Uncle Luke’s dying,” Ben said. “We need you to save him.”

**Author's Note:**

> My first prose only story for this fandom! 
> 
> This story draws from a mash-up of AU's - What if Ben Solo had taken on his regal title as an Organa and Amidala? What if Finn were Force sensitive and targeted by Snoke? What if Rey had left Jakku in the Millenium Falcon and become a smuggler?
> 
> It's a complicated ensemble piece with multiple characters. I tried to keep the characters faithful to their core conflicts even as they've been pushed into unfamiliar roles. This is, at its heart, a "what if" piece. What if I were in an unthinkable position? What if we were set against each other in this way?
> 
> The writing is dictated largely by compassion and psychological introspection. Expect lots of romantic and non-romantic character interactions, fleshing out of family bonds, and explorations of enemy dynamics.
> 
> As always, you can find my art and writing on Tumblr at https://missbliss12.tumblr.com/ and on Twitter at @MissBliss1294


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